February 7, 2024 Quick space links

3:29 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

 

 

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Pushback: Fired by Disney for noting Nazis killed Jews, actress sues, her lawyers paid for by X

2:24 pm

Gina Carano's tweet about the Nazi genocide

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Back in February 2021 my daily blacklist column focused on the horrible blackballing of actress Gina Carano by the Disney corporation. It had fired her because of the tweet to the right, in which she had stated some undeniable facts about the Nazis and their compaign to murder the Jews. As a company spokesperson stated falsely at her firing,

[H]er social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.

It was the company’s false and slanderous position — as demonstrated by numerous other actions at the same time — that Carano’s conservative positions on many issues was the equivalent of “denigrating” the queer and black communities, like a Nazi. To Disney, her effort to retell the history of the Holocaust in order to prevent it from happening again was unacceptable, and so it fired her.

Carano is now suing Disney and Lucasfilms for that firing and its subsequent smear campaign against her. You can read her complaint here. It is easy reading, and outlines in great detail the very reasonable positions taken by Carano in public, and the campaign of slanders against her that followed from Disney officials as well as advocates in the BLM and queer communities. Repeatedly Carano made it clear she was not attacking any particular group, and that her goal was to outline actual facts and defend the free speech rights of everyone. The response from Disney and the activists in the BLM and queer communities were slanders, lies, and falsehoods. Her case is strong, as she is suing under California law, which states that
» Read more

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

A small Martian volcano?

12:35 pm

A small Martian volcano?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on December 21, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled it a “fresh crater”, but that description I think is misleading, as it implies a recent impact.

The crater does not look like a fresh impact crater to me. Such things on Mars usually appear very dark, as the impact dredges up dark material. This crater is not dark. More significant is the crater itself. The small 300-foot-wide inner crater, surrounded by a circular plateau and all sitting inside the larger 1,200-foot-wide crater is completely unique compared to any impact crater I have ever seen. Impacts in soft material, such as ice-impregnated ground, can cause concentric ripple rings, but they don’t look like this.

Instead, this crater more resembles the caldera of a volcano, where subsequent eruptions can produce overlapping depressions at the volcano peak. (See for example this picture of Olympus Mons.)

Moreover, the crater sits on top of a peak approximately 300 feet high. While impacts in ice-impregnated ground on Mars can produce splash aprons as seen here, the crater usually sits at about the same elevation as the surrounding terrain, not at the top of a peak. This peak suggests the apron was forned not by a splash but repeated flows coming down from the top.
» Read more

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Freedom capsule undocks from ISS with AX-3 commercial crew

10:06 am

SpaceX’s Freedom capsule today undocked from ISS at 9:20 am (Eastern), carrying three European passengers and one commander, with a planned splashdown in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida at 8:30 am (Eastern) on February 9, 2024.

Ax-3 astronauts Michael López-Alegría, Walter Villadei, Marcus Wandt, and Alper Gezeravci will complete 18 days aboard the orbiting laboratory at the conclusion of their mission. The SpaceX Dragon will return to Earth with more than 550 pounds of science and supplies, including NASA experiments and hardware.

Live stream for that splashdown can be found here. The mission is a private one. Axiom sold the tickets, and purchased from SpaceX the Falcon 9 launch and use of its Freedom capsule. It also rented time on ISS from NASA for its crew and passengers.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

 

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Computer problem on Voyager-1 remains unsolved

9:54 am

Engineers remain baffled over a computer issue that has prevented the receipt of any data since November 2023 from Voyager-1, floating some 15 billion miles away just outside the solar system in interstellar space.

In November, the data packages transmitted by Voyager 1 manifested a repeating pattern of ones and zeros as if it were stuck, according to NASA. Dodd said engineers at JPL have spent the better part of three months trying to diagnose the cause of the problem. She said the engineering team is “99.9 percent sure” the problem originated in the FDS [Flight Data Subsystem], which appears to be having trouble “frame syncing” data.

So far, the ground team believes the most likely explanation for the problem is a bit of corrupted memory in the FDS. However, because of the computer hangup, engineers lack detailed data from Voyager 1 that might lead them to the root of the issue. “It’s likely somewhere in the FDS memory,” Dodd said. “A bit got flipped or corrupted. But without the telemetry, we can’t see where that FDS memory corruption is.”

Since November the only signal received from Voyager-1 is a carrier signal that simply tells engineers the spacecraft is alive. Though the effort continues to try to fix the spacecraft, the odds of bringing it back to life are becoming slim, especially because its power supply will run out in 2026 at the very latest. Even if they manage to fix the issue now, the spacecraft has only a short time left regardless.

Considering the computers on this spacecraft, as well as its twin Voyager-2, have been operating continuously for almost a half century since their launch in 1977, their failure now is nothing to be ashamed of. The engineers that built both did well, to put it mildly.

As for Voyager-1’s future, even dead it will fly on into interstellar space, eventually getting within 1.5 light years of a star in the constellation Camelopardalis.

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JPL to lay off 8% of its work force plus 40 contractors

11:34 pm

Claiming the uncertainty of its federal budget allocation due to Congress’s inability to pass a new budget, the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) earlier today announced it was laying off 8% of its work force, 530 employees, plus 40 contractors.

In a memo to JPL staff Feb. 6, [director Laurie] Leshin said that a lack of a final 2024 appropriations bill — NASA is operating on a CR [continuing resolution] that runs until March 8 — forced the layoffs after taking other measures such as a hiring freeze and reductions in MSR [Mars Sample Return] contracts and other spending, as well as the earlier contractor layoffs. “So in the absence of an appropriation, and as much as we wish we didn’t need to take this action, we must now move forward to protect against even deeper cuts later were we to wait,” she wrote.

Uncertainty about how the Mars Sample Return project should be designed and built had caused Congress to express doubts about the project, with the Senate suggesting major cuts. NASA responded by loudly pausing the project and suggesting its own cuts. JPL has now followed up with these layoffs. Both have I think done so as a lobbying tactic, and as expected in this game of budget lobbying these actions have caused many legislators to scream in horror: “We really didn’t mean it! We really don’t want to cut anything!”

Expect our bankrupt Congress to fold and provide NASA and JPL the blank check it wants to fly a Mars mission that will cost billions, be years late, and likely be beaten to Mars by SpaceX’s Starship (which could do the job for a tenth the cost).

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

 

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

February 6, 2024 Quick space links

3:33 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

  • Chinese pseudo-company is considering launching its rockets using “an electromagnetic catapult system”

    • They say it would increase the rocket’s payload capacity, but so would anti-gravity. We should believe this only when we see it.

 

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Pushback: Help send 9-year-old KC Chiefs fan, slandered as bigot by media, to Super Bowl

3:17 pm

Holden (R) with his father Bubba
Holden (R) with his father Bubba, being interviewed
on television following the slander. Click for video.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A fundraiser has been started to send 9-year-old KC Chiefs fan, Holden Armenta, to the Super Bowl, in defiant response to the ugly effort by one racist reporter, Carron Phillips, and his media outlet, Deadspin, to slander the boy as a bigot because he attended a game wearing facepaint with the red and black colors of the Chiefs.

Phillips had unjustly accused the child of wearing blackface, and Deadspin helped Phillips push this lie by printing a picture that only showed the black side of Armenta’s face. A head-on shot showed his facepaint had nothing to do with blackface, but was a typical example of what many football fans do, paint their faces with the colors of their team. The right side of the boy’s face was painted black, the left side red.

What made the slander even more egregious is that Holden is an American Indian, with his grandfather, Raul Armenta, on the board of the Chumash Tribe in Santa Ynez, California.
» Read more

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Curiosity’s damaged wheels continue to appear stable despite the rough Martian terrain

12:27 pm

A new look at Curiosity's worst wheel
To see the original images, go here and here.

The rover Curiosity on Mars has for more than two years been traveling across a very rocky and rough terrain as it climbs higher and higher on Mount Sharp inside Gale Crater. Since the rover’s wheels experienced far more damage than expected early in its mission, when it was on the floor of the crater where the terrain was not as severe, engineers have adopted a whole range of techniques to try to reduce any further damage.

First, they increased the safety margins on the software that guides Curiosity. It picks its way very carefully through the rocks, and stops immediately if it finds itself crossing terrain that is too rough.

Second, the science team does a photo survey of the wheels after every kilometer of travel. The two pictures to the right compare the damage on the rover’s most damaged wheel, with an image from the previous survey on top and the most recent image, taken yesterday, on the bottom. I have numbered the same treads, called grousers, in the two images to make it easier to compare them.

As you can see, it does not appear as if the damage has increased in the 210 sols or seven months of travel since the last survey. This wheel looks bad, but it is the worst wheel on the rover, and the strategies that the engineering team adopted years ago to reduce further damage continue to work, even as Curiosity traverses some very rough ground.

The software requires the rover to travel shorter distances in each drive when the ground is this rough, but the consequence is that it will last much longer, and thus have a better chance of reaching higher elevations on Mount Sharp.

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SpaceX’s revenue estimate for 2024 is $13.3 billion

10:56 am

According to an independent analysis of SpaceX’s announced launch plans for 2024, the company’s revenue in 2024 is predicted to be somewhere around $13.3 billion, including earnings from Starlink subscribers.

This independent estimate is less than SpaceX’s own projection of $15 billion, but what is important is that the revenue in 2024 equals approximately the total amount of investment capital that SpaceX has raised for Starship/Superheavy and Starlink. Add to this the estimated revenues from 2023, $8 billion, and it appears SpaceX is in a very healthy position to complete the construction of Starship and begin flying it regularly for profit.

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Perseverance snaps its first picture of grounded Ingenuity

10:25 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Ingenuity on dune, as seen by Perseverance on February 4, 2024
Click for original image.

Perseverance on February 4, 2024 finally moved into a position where it was close enough to take its first picture of the now grounded Ingenuity helicopter. That picture, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, is to the right, taken by the rover’s left high resolution camera. You can see Ingenuity sitting on the slope of a dune near the upper right.

The overview map above provides the context. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s final resting spot. The blue dot marks Perseverance’s present location, with the yellow lines indicating approximately the area covered by the photo.

Whether the rover is now close enough to get good imagery for a final engineering test of Ingenuity — where its rotors will be rotated and shifted slowly to determine the extent of the propeller damage — is not clear. Perseverance could move much closer, but its science team might not want to cross these dunes out of fear the rover would get stuck. They might move forward a few more feet, to the top of the south bank of Neretva Vallis, before doing that test.

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Juno completes its closest approach of the Jupiter moon Io

9:53 am

Io on February 3, 2024
Click for full image.

The Jupiter orbiter Juno successfully completed its 58th close fly-by of the gas giant, during which it also made its closest approach to the volcanic moon Io, zipping past at a distance of 932 miles. The image of Io to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken at that closest Io approach, and shows a mountain on the horizon as well as a large shield volcano in the center (the dark splotch), with a major lava flow to the south. The picture was processed by citizen scientist Brian Swift.

Another image, processed by Björn Jónsson, shows the differences at one volcano dubbed Loki between the December 30, 2023 and the February 3, 2024 flybys. It appears that the brightness of the apron of lava that surrounds the volcano changes significantly depending on the lighting and the angle of view. In December it was almost black. In February it was greyish silver, almost shiny.

Another image, processed by Andrea Luck, captured faint eruption plumes on Io’s edge, caused by an ongoing eruption just beyond the horizon.

Juno still has four more flybys of Io coming up, but none will be as close as the February 3rd approach.

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A pin falls off Virgin Galactic’s mother ship during most recent passenger flight

9:14 am

Virgin Galactic has notified the FAA that a pin fell off its Eve mother ship, carrying its SpaceShipTwo Unity suborbital spacecraft, during most recent passenger flight on January 26, 2024.

Virgin Galactic said the alignment pin fell from its VMS Eve mothership aircraft, the plane that carries VSS Unity aloft. The pin is used to ensure Unity is aligned to Eve when mated during preflight preparations. After takeoff, the pin helps transfer drag loads from Unity into the pylon and center wing section of the aircraft. The alignment pin detached after Unity separated from Eve, although the company did not state how long afterwards the pin came off. The pin, along with a separate shear pin fitting assembly, do not play a role in flight activities after the release of the spaceplane.

The FAA states it will do an investigation before permitting more flights, but we know from a recent GAO report that it does no such thing. It simply observes the investigation by the company involved, and then rubber stamps it afterward. Nor is this wrong, as no one at the FAA is qualified to do such investigations, unlike the engineers at the company.

The investigation however might impact the next flight. The company has said it intends to end flights using Unity after then next three, and then stand down as it replaces it with its next generation spacecraft. This incident might force that stand-down to occur sooner.

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Weather stops everything by SpaceX in the last 24 hours

9:00 am

SpaceX found itself stymied in the past 24 hours due to poor weather conditions on both coasts, with two launches and the return of a Dragon capsule from space all scrubbed.

First a Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg of 22 Starlink satellites was scrubbed, the launch pushed back from yesterday to tonight at 5.39 pm (Pacific).

Then a launch of a NASA climate satellite on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral was scrubbed shortly thereafter, the launch rescheduled for 1:33 am (Eastern) tonight.

Finally, the return of Axiom’s Ax-3 commercial passenger flight to ISS was scrubbed today because of poor weather conditions.

NASA, Axiom Space, and SpaceX are standing down from the Tuesday, Feb. 6, undocking opportunity of Axiom Mission 3 from the International Space Station. Mission teams will continue to review weather conditions off the coast of Florida, which currently are not favorable for return, and set a new target opportunity for space station departure and splashdown of the Dragon spacecraft and Axiom crew members.

The undocking is now tentatively set for tomorrow morning, but this remains unconfirmed. The three passengers and the Axiom commander have so far spent 18 days in orbit. The original plan was for a 14 day mission, most of which to be spent on ISS, but weather can always extend such plans.

The launch scrubs illustrate the challenge SpaceX faces in reaching its stated goal of 150 launches in 2024. It appears the company is now capable of technically meeting that goal. To do it however it needs to launch almost every other day, and weather simply might not allow a pace like this during some parts of the year in both Florida and California. Whether the company can make-up for these delays with multiple daily launches at other times remains unknown. If it does, it will be another feather in the cap for SpaceX.

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February 5, 2024 Quick space links.

4:44 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

 

 

 

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Asteroid that landed near Berlin found and identified

3:07 pm

The meteorite that crashed near Berlin late last month, only hours after being spotted in space, has now been found and identified.

“We only spotted the meteorites after a Polish team of meteorite hunters had identified the first find and could show us what to look for,” said Jenniskens. “After that, our first finds were made quickly by Freie Universität students Dominik Dieter and Cara Weihe.”

The meteorites are fragments of the small asteroid 2024 BX1, first spotted with a telescope at Konkoly Observatory in Hungary by astronomer Dr. Krisztián Sárneczky, tracked and then predicted to impact Earth’s atmosphere by NASA’s Scout and ESA’s Meerkat Asteroid Guard impact hazard assessment systems, with Davide Farnocchia of JPL/Caltech providing frequent trajectory updates, and finally causing a bright fireball that was seen and filmed. This was Jenniskens’ fourth guided recovery of such a small asteroid impact, following a 2008 impact in Sudan, a 2018 impact in Botswana, and a 2023 impact in France.

Today, Jenniskens’ collaborators at the Museum für Naturkunde officially announced that the first examinations of one of these pieces with an electron beam microprobe prove the typical mineralogy and chemical composition of an achondrite of the aubrite type.

Aubrite meteorites are rare and hard to find, so this discovery is important.

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The failure of the COVID jab and the people who pushed it

2:42 pm

Sudden collapse
One of many sudden public collapses.
Click for full video.

I think it is time to do an update on the recent research outlining the disaster that the mRNA COVID jab has brought to humans worldwide. The news has generally been bad, though sadly none of it has been a surprise to anyone paying attention since 2021 and 2022.

Note to that no where in any of my reporting do I ever call these shots “vaccines.” In the past, when you got a vaccine it protected you from the targeted disease. The jab does not do that. It is not even clear that it reduces your chances of catching the disease, with significant evidence actually suggesting it increases your chances.

We begin with a study published in August 2023 that found that the jab appeared to damage the immune system of children.

Kids who got Pfizer’s mRNA Covid jabs had a weakened immune response to other viruses and bacteria, Australian researchers reported in a study published last week. The diminished response appeared within weeks after the second Pfizer dose, the authors found. Blood taken from the children produced fewer crucial signaling molecules when stimulated with several common potential bacteria and viruses.

Over time, the immune response to bacteria returned to normal. But the diminished response to viruses lasted at least six months, for as long as the researchers collected data.

This study was small, involving only 29 kids, but the data was “troubling” to all researchers involved, and demanded further research.

Then in September a study of health care workers found that getting the jab actually made them sicker.
» Read more

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A spot where the surface of Mars cracked

1:22 pm

The spot where Mars cracked
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on September 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a small section of the Cerberus Fossae cracks, a parallel series of cracks that stretch more than 700 miles across the volcanic plains of Mars.

These cracks formed when the ground spread apart, creating a void in which the surface collapsed. You can see this process illustrated quite clearly by the crater in the lower right, as indicated by the arrow. The crater had existed prior to the crack. When the ground split and collapsed, only the northeast quadrant of the crater was destroyed.

These cracks might also have been the source of Mars’ most recent large volcanic event, as shown by the overview map below.
» Read more

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A sign of hope and disaster: Students rip out tampon dispenser in boy’s bathroom 20 minutes after it was installed

12:18 pm

Marc Belanda, principal of Brookfield and leading the way to a queer future!
Marc Belanda, principal of Brookfield HS,
leading the way to a queer future!

Last week a story made news when administrators at Brookfield High School in Connecticut installed a woman’s tampon dispenser in the boy’s bathroom, as now required by an insane law passed by the state legislature in 2022.

A bill passed in the 2022 legislative session requires public school Boards of Education to provide free menstrual products to students in all girls restrooms, in any all-gender restrooms, and in at least one boys restroom. According to Connecticut’s Department of Public Health (DPH) “The intention of the law is to address period poverty, meaning the struggle to purchase period products due to lack of income.”

It wasn’t however the installation that made news, but the fact that only twenty minutes after the dispenser was installed students at the school (likely teenage boys) ripped it out.
» Read more

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Curiosity looks ahead at very rough terrain higher on Mount Sharp

10:00 am

Panorama on Sol 4086, February 3, 2024
Click for full image.

The rough terrain higher on Mount Sharp
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken on February 3, 2024 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. The area it covers is indicated by the rectangle on the panorama above, which has been cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here. That panorama was created from 46 photos taken by the rover’s right navigation camera on that same day.

Those rough small peaks are higher on Mount Sharp, though far below its summit. The summit itself is not visible, and in fact has never been visible to Curiosity since it landed on Mars in August 2012. The peak is about 26 miles to the south and about 16,000 feet higher up, with much of the mountain in the way.

These small, rough peaks are in an area that the rover will likely never go, as shown in the overview map below.
» Read more

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China completes two launches yesterday

9:38 am

China successfully completed two launches yesterday from two different spaceports using two different rockets.

First a Long March 2C rocket launched 11 satellites as part of a civilian-based communications constellation, lifting off from it Xichang spaceport in southwest China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed, all of which use very toxic hypergolic fuels.

Next a Smart Dragon-3 rocket produced by the pseudo-company Landspace placed nine satellties into orbit, lifting off from a barge just off the coast of China. No information at all was released about the nine satellites. Furthermore, China’s state-run press made no mention of Landspace in its report, indicating once again what it thinks of these so-called private companies.

The 2024 launch race:

10 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran
1 India
1 ULA
1 Japan
1 Rocket Lab

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February 2, 2024 Quick Space links

3:45 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

 

  • 40 members of Congress send letter to NASA, complaining about cuts to Mars Sample Return mission

    • It’s all a game. NASA makes the cuts to generate protests. Congress screams and protests. The two get together and fund everything, then claiming they saved the world. In this game however no one ever asks: “Is the project as designed worth the money? Can this be done a better way?” To ask such questions would suggest maybe the money shouldn’t be spent, and that concept is wholly alien to these swamp players.

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Sunspot update: The Sun in January acted like solar maximum is here

11:11 am

In my monthly sunspot update at the start of January, I asked in the headline “Are we now in the next solar maximum?”

The Sun’s sunspot activity in January since then has apparently answered that question. NOAA this week posted its monthly update of its graph showing solar sunspot activity on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, and as I do every month since 2011, I have posted that graph below, with annotations to provide a larger context.
» Read more

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Collins Aerospace tests its new spacesuit on the Zero Gravity airplane

9:37 am

On January 30, 2024 Collins Aerospace, one of two companies that NASA has contracted to design and build new spacesuits for its future missions, successfully tested its new spacesuit on the Zero Gravity airplane, where it was able to have a person use the suit in short but weightless conditions.

Collins is designing its suit in collaboration with ILC Dover and Oceaneering. Former NASA astronauts, John “Danny” Olivas and Dan Burbank, each donned the suit and performed a series of test objectives while onboard a Zero Gravity plane that’s able to perform parabolic maneuvers to simulate microgravity for short bursts. They were surrounded by several support personnel who were gathering data about the suit performance.

In total, they performed 40 parabolas during the flight. Collins said the primary goals included “evaluation of the suit’s pressure garment system fit and functionality, use of International Space Station tools and interfaces, and reviewed performance of the new Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or EMU, against the current design.”

The two spacesuit contracts (the second is with Axiom) are costing NASA about $335 million total to get the suits designed, built, and certified for use in spacewalks and ground operations on the Moon. Both companies appear on schedule to deliver those suits in less than three years.

Previously, NASA had tried to build new spacesuits on its own, and had spent a billion dollars over fourteen years while building nothing. The contrast in this story between the government and private enterprise should be clarifying to everyone.

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One last engineering test planned for Ingenuity

9:23 am

Engineers plan to do one last engineering test with Ingenuity, slowly rotate its propellers while collecting imagery, likely from both the helicopter and Perseverance.

Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity Project Manager, said that NASA and JPL still aren’t sure what caused the damage to Ingenuity’s blades; it remains unclear whether the helicopter’s power dipped during landing, causing unwanted ground contact, or if it accidentally struck the ground to cause a “brownout.”

Tzanetos added that NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) will slowly rotate the helicopter’s blades and “wiggle” them, or adjust their angle, while collecting video in order to allow the team to determine the extent of Ingenuity’s damage. However, Tzanetos said that no matter what such imaging will show, the dual-rotor drone has flown its last flight and will soon end its mission.

This test will likely not occur until Perseverance gets into a position where it can film the test also. The helicopter’s cameras look downward, so all it will be able to photograph is the shadow of those blades as they move. Perseverance can look directly at it, and if it gets into a position slightly higher than Ingenuity it can get a good viewing angle down at the blades.

At the moment the rover is about a thousand feet to the east, though steadily working its way towards it.

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Japan’s lunar lander shuts down for long lunar night

9:15 am

SLIM's last image
Click for original image.

After two days of post landing operations, engineers for the Japanese lunar lander SLIM have shut it down now as the sun has set at its landing site on the Moon and its solar panel can no longer charge its batteries.

The picture to the right, reduced to post here, was the last image sent back by SLIM before shut down. It looks to the southeast across the width of 885-foot-wide Shioli Crater, the opposite rim the bright ridge in the upper right about a thousand feet away.

The engineers shut the spacecraft down prior to sunset in order to increase the chances that it will survive that very long harsh lunar night and reactivate when the Sun rises in two weeks. They recognized that the odds of this occurring are slim (no pun intended), because the lander was not designed to withstand the night’s cold temperatures, and more important, the solar panel will not get recharged until late in the lunar day, an additional week-plus past sunrise. That long period of inactivity will likely kill it.

No matter. The spacecraft’s main goal was to prove the ability of its landing system to land softly within a small target zone. It did so, even if it had an engine issue that caused it to land upside down. This new engineering will make it possible to send unmanned and manned landers to places on other planets that previously were impossible.

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